Review Intel Core i9-7980XE & 7960X

Staff Member

Finally the Skylake-X series is complete. After hastily announcing the 18-core Core i9 last May during Computex 2017, we now have Intel's new 16- and 18-core processors on-hand four months later.

We don't doubt that Intel had planned to release Skylake-X all along, but did they plan to offer something higher than a 12-core part before catching wind of AMD's Threadripper?

It also seems unlikely that they meant to announce the X299 platform in late May and release it in June, made evident by the rushed motherboard development and the mess that ensued.

We received the first Intel Core i9 part -- the $1,00010-core 7900X -- in late June along with a few Core i7 models featuring 8, 6 and even 4 cores, but it wasn't until August that we learned the official specifications for Intel's new $1,200 12-core, $1,400 14-core, $1,700 16 core and a $2000 18-core processors, the last two of which we'll be reviewing today.

Before covering the Core i9-7980XE and 7960X in detail, it's worth remembering that during all the chaos of Intel's latest desktop platform release, AMD launched its Ryzen Threadripper series on August 10 including the 1950X and 1920X, the latter being a $1,000 16-core CPU that shamed Intel's then flagship 7900X.

As we are about to see, there was more to come from Intel but at the time we questioned if the $1,200 12-core 7920X could even beat the 1950X and suspected that it would probably take the $1,400 14-core 7940X to match AMD's 16-core CPU. While we don't have the 12-core or 14-core models, Intel has served up the ultra-expensive 16-core and 18-core chips which should give us an idea about where the 12 and 14-core versions will sit, and of course we're always keen to see what the flagship parts have to offer.

To quickly recap, the Core i9-7980XE packs 18 cores and with its support for Hyper Threading it touts an insane 36-threads. Each cores has its own 1MB L2 cache and thus there is a total of 18MB L2 cache. Meanwhile, there is 24.75MB worth of L3 cache and due to the restructuring of the cache for the Skylake-X architecture the 7980XE only has slightly more L3 than the previous generation 6950X.

The 7980XE operates at a base frequency of 2.6GHz with a Turbo Boost 2.0 frequency of 4.2GHz and a Turbo Boost Max 3.0 frequency of 4.4GHz. The 16-core 7960X features a base clock speed of 2.8GHz with the same Turbo Boost frequencies. It has a slightly smaller 22MB L3 cache while there is a total of 16MB for the L2. Both CPUs offer the full 44 PCIe lanes, quad-channel memory support and a 165 watt TDP rating.

Both CPUs use the LGA2066 socket and are supported by existing X299 motherboards. For testing I'm using the Gigabyte Aorus X299 Gaming 9 with 32GB of G.Skill TridentZ RGB DDR4 memory clocked at 1600MHz, so DDR4-3200, using CL14 timings. The GTX 1080 Ti was used for all the testing while we've thrown Vega 64 Liquid Cooled in for a few game tests. The focus though will of course be on the productivity testing, these are 18 and 16-core CPUs after all.

We received the first Intel Core i9 part -- the $1,00010-core 7900X -- in late June along with a few Core i7 models featuring 8, 6 and even 4 cores, but it wasn't until August that we learned the official specifications for Intel's new $1,200 12-core, $1,400 14-core, $1,700 16 core and a $2000 18-core processors, the last two of which we'll be reviewing today.

i9... many people still on i3 xD next one in my list to buy it will be the one that will be so powerfull to be able to build AI. Not paying 1000+ dollars/euro for something that in few years it will not be able to do big jobs like this.

Content CreatorTrusted

i9... many people still on i3 xD next one in my list to buy it will be the one that will be so powerfull to be able to build AI. Not paying 1000+ dollars/euro for something that in few years it will not be able to do big jobs like this.

Intel play in ball.... 330$ for Core i7-7740X and still 16 pci-e lanes rofl
for $969 you will get cpu finally Core i9-7900X with 44 pci-e....

Whole 6-8 year Intel didnt make nothiing fantastic. who have solid i5 or i7 (2600k and something aurond 3930k) no need buy new cpu becasue will lost money to buy again new mobo and get new cpu more nerfed than before and overpriced ... and also dd4 which have sux improve technology speed :/
Better safe money and buy pci SSD to get op speed than change lga2011 for other lates generation....

Im glad AMD finally start make some good CPU becasue im get bored of this toxic marketing from intel.

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